Fully awake at 30,000 feet

It took a fatal air crash and an act of Congress to update useless airline work rules from the 1960s, but the Federal Aviation Administration did right by changing the scheduling requirements of commercial airline pilots so that they show up ready and rested for the job.

That's the good news. Pilots will get an additional two hours of break time between flights, and they will no longer be permitted to be on duty in the cockpit for more than eight or nine continuous hours -- taxiing and waiting time included. While it was never officially established that pilot fatigue caused the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 near Buffalo, N.Y., in 2009, the exhausted pilots, cited for failures in responding to the aircraft's stall warning system, were heard yawning on the cockpit voice recorder. Fifty people were killed.

The bad news is that the new rules, set to go into effect in two years, do not extend to commercial cargo flights. Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, had it right when she told reporters: "A tired pilot is a tired pilot, whether there are 10 paying customers on board or 100, whether the payload is passengers or pallets."

We would add: The risk to those on the ground is every bit as great from a falling cargo jet as from a passenger jet.

At issue is money. A little more than a year ago, an airline trade association barked that the FAA's plans for rescheduling pilots would cost the industry about $2 billion -- surely an unsustainable sum in an industry so competitive that the likes of American Airlines files for bankruptcy. But the FAA worked to streamline its requirements and last week estimated the rule-implementation cost to the industry over the next 10 years to be $297 million -- hardly a pittance but a reasonable price for saving lives.

The FAA had the push of Congress, which, after tireless lobbying by families of the Buffalo flight's victims, ordered the agency to issue new rules. Still, the NTSB had fought unsuccessfully for nearly two decades to revise the outdated pilot work schedule regulations. The debate shifted in recent years, however, as researchers showed fatigue acts upon a person's motor ability and judgment much as alcohol does in creating measurable impairment. Some studies showed travel through time zones and light and dark phases of the day could also affect performance.

These are surely among the reasons the Independent Pilots Association filed a lawsuit last Friday seeking to have cargo operators covered by the FAA's new rules and accused the FAA of yielding to industry pressure in exempting them in the first place. Separately, the FAA estimates it would cost the airline industry an additional $214 million to extend the rule to cargo flights.

The truth, however, seems inescapable: An exhausted pilot is an impaired pilot and ought not be at the controls, whether he or she flies for a passenger carrier or mainly at night, when people crave sleep most, for FedEx or United Parcel Service cargo services.

The FAA got off to a good start last week by issuing new rules that will help ensure passenger jet pilots are sufficiently awake to fly -- federal data suggest about six lives a year will be spared.

But the agency should now bypass its plan to seek voluntary compliance from cargo carriers and simply make the rules apply to all. This will ensure not only the safety of overworked cargo pilots and their crew but safety to those of us on the ground who know full well that nodding off at the controls can be prevented by just a few more hours of break time.